New W&m Student Center Faces Delay

March 08, 1990|By MARK DI VINCENZO Staff Writer

WILLIAMSBURG — A plan to allow The College of William and Mary and three other state colleges to pay for new buildings with bonds is in jeopardy because Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is concerned that too much of the repayment burden would fall on students.

"The sticking point is: Should students have to pay to finance most of these projects?" said Wilder's press secretary, Laura Dillard.

W&M and Virginia Tech, James Madison and George Mason universities have asked the General Assembly and Wilder for permission to finance construction projects with revenue bonds, requests that were expected to be granted because the colleges are not asking for state money. But last week Wilder surprised college presidents and legislators when he told them he wanted to study how college buildings are financed.

Wilder is not opposed to colleges using bonds, Dillard said Wednesday, but he is concerned with how they repay those bonds.

W&M, for example, wants to sell $15 million worth of bonds to build a student center that would replace the 30-year-old Campus Center. If the college uses bonds, some would be repaid with private donations and some from other college funds, but about $13.5 million would be repaid with non-aca demic student fees, said Nancy S. Nash, assistant to the vice president for administration and finance.

Dillard, a 1987 W&M graduate, said, "In William and Mary's case, with a student center, compared to, say, a dormitory, it's more difficult to make the case that students who pay for most of the building are getting their money's worth."

The center, which would be near Cary Field, the school's football stadium, would likely include a theater, dining hall, post office, student lounges, meeting rooms, a branch for the college bookstore and another store.

W&M officials project that fees would eventually be raised by $320 per year per student to repay the bonds.

In Virginia, only James Madison and Virginia Military Institute charge higher non-academic student fees than W&M, where Virginia residents this year paid $1,514 per year, and out-of-state students paid $1,784, according to a recently released study of the fee structure here.

Dillard also hinted that the colleges that have asked Wilder to endorse bond financing, now being considered in the General Assembly as amendments to the state budget, would have been wise to give him more notice of their plans.

"Shouldn't you tell the governor ahead of time what you have planned?" she said. "That was not done."

W&M officials are unsure what they will do if they are not permitted to use bonds to finance the center, Nash said.

"We hope things go our way," Nash said. "If they don't, we'll have to go back to the drawing board. There has been some talk about raising the money, but I don't think there's $15 million out there."

There have also been discussions, she said, about the college obtaining low-interest loans from the Student Loan Marketing Association, a federally chartered, stockholder-owned corporation that insures student loans and provides financial services to banks and colleges. Current loans have an interest rates of about 7 percent.

The new center would be on Gooch Drive in the center of campus, far from Jamestown Road, which students must cross to reach the existing center. Danger to student pedestrians is one of the reasons to build a new center.

Another reason is the college has outgrown the existing center, which was built when the college had about 2,000 undergraduates, about 3,500 fewer than it has today. Finding a seat in the center's dining area during lunch and dinner hours had become so difficult that last year it was extended with a canopy as the ceiling and heavy, clear plastic sheets for walls.

If W&M receives permission to use bonds, college officials have said construction would likely begin next year and would be completed about two years later. The existing center would then house administrative offices and a dining hall.